The most fun I've ever had with a Social worker Present!!

Tonight I went to a support meeting organised by our LA, the speaker was a Theraplay practitioner which is what made me want to attend (Little Prince had a course of Theraplay last year). The therapist spent about half an hour explaining the theory behind Theraplay and then its application. She was quite a nervous speaker and it was very dry and, I'm sorry to say a bit boring. However, she then announced that she was going to demonstrate a Theraplay session - using two of the social workers to play the parent and the child. This is where it got interesting!!! The head of the dept played the mum (imagine your boss pretending to be your mum!!) and another social worker the child (this is the social worker we saw bouncing down the slide and doing the conga with the kids at the fun day!!).

The session started off just like a real Theraplay session - the parent led the child in and the therapist asked them to jump on cushion islands to enter the room. Then the therapist exclaimed over how much the child had grown and how big she was (bearing in mind she is at Weight Watchers at the moment!!) and proceeded to measure her height, arm muscles and smile!! Then the therapist checked the child over for owies - and rubbed lotion into the owies she found. Both social workers were giggling quite a bit by now (as were the audience). They then played various games - mother and child rubbing lotion into each others hands, followed by a pulling game where everyone kept falling over as their hands were so slippery. They made handprints, again using lotion - got the child's hand wet with the lotion and pressed the hand onto a piece of coloured paper, then dabbed the wet print with talcum powder - very clever!!! The mum had to coo over the lovely hand prints and promise to keep them forever. Then the mum was asked to look away, while the therapist and the child hid post it notes with messages for mum all over the child's body!! How on earth was 'mum' supposed to deal with this?? That was the start of the breakdown into fits of laughter. Mum managed to find the papers behind the child's ears, but the child then gave her the others (one up her trouser leg, another up her sleeve). The bits of paper had suggestions of things mum and child could do together - eg sing a nursery rhyme. The 'therapy' session continued to get more and more silly (these activities make sense with a parent and child) but not really with a pair of social workers. It was so much fun to watch though, I only wish I'd taken my camera phone!! We would have aced the annual reviews with that as 'incentive' for the social workers to see our point of view lol

I also managed to have a chat with the social worker who has taken over the job of trying to get hold a Later Life Letter for Little Prince. She seemed a very nice lady and explained where the difficulties in getting hold of this letter lie - the placing authority! Which I knew anyway as the last two social workers trying to get hold of the letter said the same. The Placing Authority just aren't responsing to repeated requests to produce this letter, or even just to acknowledge receipt of the request!! She has said she will get in touch with me next week and let me know where we are up to, and what our options are for escalating our request. I am hoping that we don't have to make a formal complaint, but if nothing is forthcoming soon I think that will be our only option.